The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today (Sept. 11) that it is investigating an outbreak of Campylobacter — a type of bacteria that causes diarrhea — linked with puppies sold at Petland stores, a national pet store chain. So far, the outbreak has sickened 39 people in seven states (Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin), the CDC said. Of those who became ill, 12 are Petland employees, and 27 came into contact with puppies sold at Petland because they recently bought a puppy at Petland, visited a Petland, or visited or lived in a home with a puppy sold through Petland, the CDC said.

Few things instill a sense of wonder quite like the final frontier. The best space photos show off the beauty of Earth, our solar system, and the far corners of the universe. Here are our current favorites.

Germany's Bayer AG, one of the world's biggest agricultural chemical companies, is joining a $100 million bet that the next big breakthrough in crop fertilizers will be found inside a biological Petri dish. Its Bayer LifeScience Center division, along with biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks, is forming a startup to focus on developing biological solutions to reduce the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer, or make farmers' use more efficient, company officials said this week. The venture will be backed via a Series A investment from the two companies and hedge fund Viking Global Investors LP.

The mysterious flash of high-energy burst, called FRB 150215, was detected in February 2015 using the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. A controversial project will send messages to stars with planets thought to be capable of sustaining life – with the first transmissions starting in 2018. Not everyone is enamoured of the idea – with experts such as Stephen Hawking warning that it might attract hostile attention from aliens (if they exist).

Scientists in Germany on Friday cast doubt on the work of colleagues who claimed that plastic bag-eating caterpillars might hold the answer to the planet's growing synthetic waste problem. Polyethylene, ubiquitous in plastic bags and packaging, poses a major threat to the environment, including for animals that get entangled in it, if not properly recycled. Bertocchini and her team reported study results in April claiming to show that wax moth caterpillar intestines chemically biodegrade plastic.

Ambassador Ronald Sanders, the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the United States, delivered a chilling report on the status of his country in the wake of Hurricane Irma. "The damage is complete," Sanders told
PRI's The Takeaway. "For the first time in 300 years, there’s not a single living person on the island of Barbuda — a civilization that has existed on that island for over 300 years has now been extinguished." SEE ALSO: Jaw-dropping satellite images show historic Hurricane Irma swallowing Caribbean islands Hurricane Irma hit Barbuda on September 6 as a category 5 tropical cyclone. The 400 mile-across storm entirely swallowed the 62 square mile island, and laid waste to 95 percent of the island's structures. The huge eye of Category 5 Hurricane #Irma completely engulfed the island of Barbuda last night, captured by the Suomi NPP #VIIRS overpass. pic.twitter.com/BKNFgx8r4V — UW-Madison CIMSS (@UWCIMSS) September 6, 2017 Codrington Port, Barbuda Codrington Port, BarbudaImage: DGI Imagery “This was a huge monster,” Sanders added. “The island and the people on the island had absolutely no chance.” Residents evacuated to neighboring Antigua where they are being housed in shelters. The only living creatures on the island are now pets and livestock. The organization World Animal Protection is attempting to feed and rescue the animals. Barbuda ‘barely habitable’ after Hurricane Irma: https://t.co/YoxBnK6sh7 via @YouTube — Al Jazeera Videos (@AJEVideos) September 7, 2017 Sanders told
PRI he estimates that reconstruction could cost $300 million, and will take time. That's because rebuilding Barbuda won't be a simple matter of replacing what was once there. Instead, Barbuda must be reconstituted for a world in which another Irma might be possible. Hurricane Irma struck Barbuda as a ferociously intense Category 5 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour. The ambassador called upon the international community to provide aid, because Barbuda simply does not have the resources to rebuild. The GDP of Barbuda is $1.4 billion, compared to the United States' $18.57 trillion. “We have declared a state of emergency in Barbuda because it is a complete disaster and uninhabitable,” he says. “We cannot cope with our own resources alone.” Before and After Images of Hurricane Irma's Destruction in Barbuda and the Virgin Islands. https://t.co/diSogP3ZRw #StormHour pic.twitter.com/NU9dJVxubi — #StormHour (@StormHour) September 12, 2017 He also explicitly linked the need for assistance to climate change. By raising sea levels and increasing ocean and air temperatures, global warming can increase the damage wrought by hurricanes. Irma, for example, was the most powerful storm on record to strike the northern Leeward Islands, and the most powerful ever observed in the Atlantic outside of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Because developed nations disproportionately contribute to global warming through their emissions of greenhouse gases, Sanders indicated that aid is an economic imperative. SEE ALSO: How Hurricane Irma became a monstrous, record-shattering storm, and stayed that way “We believe climate change is here to stay — it’s a reality, despite all of the naysayers,” he says. “We know that these things have occurred as a result of the profligacy of the countries that are rich, and have abused the system. We, unfortunately, who contribute less than naught point naught percent of pollution of the world’s atmosphere, are the world’s greatest victims.” If you ant to help Barbuda rebuild, check out how to assist with Hurricane Irma recovery here.
Mashable science editor Andrew Freedman contributed reporting.

A Florida photographer on an early-morning bike ride the day after Hurricane Irma ravaged the coast stumbled upon an exciting find: a dugout canoe that may be hundreds of years old, according to officials. “As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what it was,” Randy Lathrop, a self-proclaimed history buff, told ABC News of his unusual discovery. The canoe washed up from the Indian River, north of Cocoa, Florida, along what locals have dubbed Florida’s “Space Coast” for its proximity to the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Bayer AG is joining with hedge-fund giant Viking Global Investors for a record wager in the burgeoning world of agricultural technology, the latest bet that farmers are going to need new tools to feed ...

Humans evolved in a world where most speech was intimate, casual and ephemeral. Facebook and Twitter have redefined it as public, formal and permanent. Jokes and gaffes that once would have gone no further than the water cooler—or Trump’s infamous “locker room”—now have a potentially worldwide audience. Society is still grappling with the change.

Like many in the African-American community, Senators Booker and Scott were both deeply offended by Mr. Trump’s statements casting blame on both sides for the tragic events that led to the death of one woman, and appearing to put white supremacists on an equal moral footing with those who oppose them.

Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) have endured decades of persecution. Some 370,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh. An estimated 1 million to 1.2 million live in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine, where they make up about a third of the population.

A common predictor of war is whether enough people expect one. A new Gallup poll, for example, finds 58 percent of Americans support military action against North Korea if economic and diplomatic efforts fail to end its nuclear threat. That figure is up from 47 percent in 2003. Such polling, however, is enlightening for two reasons. It presumes the public might have a say on whether a conflict breaks out. And it focuses more on the possibility of warmaking than on peacemaking.